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4.61 AVERAGE
4.61 AVERAGE
The glorification of one race and the consequent debasement of another—or others—always has been and always will be a recipe for murder. There is no way around this.
The Fire Next Time is a 1963 book which contains two essays, two letters: "My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation", first appeared in The Progressive in 1962, and "Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind", published in The New Yorker that same year.
Unlike Baldwin's poetry, I felt an indescribable connection with this book. His words convey unimaginable pain and yet a strong sense of hope, which he makes it sound intrinsically related to our nature.
I finished this book yesterday. I just watched Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, a hurricane on stage. Everything makes one feel like living in a bubble of comfortable isolation, as we keep complaining about a petty, existential emptiness when people are going through actual abuse due to the color of their skin, their gender, their ideologies. It makes one feel so small. Until a couple of days later, we become the center of the universe again, of course, and we drown in a pond filled with minutiae like the narcissistic individuals we are, displaying an alarming lack of empathy.
This is the kind of book one should read more often to retain whatever makes us human.
As a friend says, I close this review with a selection of this writer's thought-provoking prose.
Let me spell out precisely what I mean by that for the heart of the matter is here and the crux of my dispute with my country. You were born where you were born and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason. The limits to your ambition were thus expected to be settled. You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence. You were expected to make peace with mediocrity.
from Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation
*
...I do not know many Negroes who are eager to be “accepted” by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks, simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet. White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed.
[...]
The struggle, therefore, that now begins in the world is extremely complex, involving the historical role of Christianity in the realm of power—that is, politics—and in the realm of morals. In the realm of power, Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and cruelty—necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of liberating the infidels.
[...]
It is not too much to say that whoever wishes to become a truly moral human being (and let us not ask whether or not this is possible; I think we must believe that it is possible) must first divorce himself from all the prohibitions, crimes, and hypocrisies of the Christian church. If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.
from Letter from a Region of My Mind
Or of any god.
Aug 16-18, 18
* Later on my blog.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
“perhaps part of the terror they had caused me to feel came from the fact that i unquestionably wanted to be somebody’s little boy.”
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Audio - insightful perspective on the black male experience, religion, and living in white America. Had some great quotes, easily digestible
"Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would've frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Ant upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations."
"And here we are, at the center of the arc, trapped in the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel the world has ever seen. Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we -and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others -do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world."
"And here we are, at the center of the arc, trapped in the gaudiest, most valuable, and most improbable water wheel the world has ever seen. Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we -and now I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others -do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world."
Non è stata una lettura spiacevole - al contrario, molto interessante. Se solo non fosse stata una lettura di lavoro, fatta in tempi e modi poco consoni, avrei potuto apprezzarlo di più, ragionarci meglio. Lo rileggerò in futuro, con più calma, per darne una valutazione aggiornata.
informative
reflective
fast-paced